A little too cozy with Big Oil

December 30, 2006

If I didn’t know better, I might just think the Bush administration is a little too cozy with the oil industry.

The Justice Department is investigating whether the director of a multibillion-dollar oil-trading program at the Interior Department has been paid as a consultant for oil companies hoping for contracts.

The director of the program and three subordinates, all based in Denver, have been transferred to different jobs and have been ordered to cease all contacts with the oil industry until the investigation is completed some time next spring, according to officials involved.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation had not been announced publicly, said investigators were worried that senior government officials had been steering huge oil-trading contracts to favored companies.

This news, of course, comes shortly after we learned that former Interior Secretary Gale Norton has sailed through the revolving door to become a lawyer for Royal Dutch Shell.

Which comes shortly after revelations that officials at Bush’s Interior Department tried to hide information that federal incentives for oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico isn’t cost effective, doesn’t produce a lot of oil, and is generally just a massive give-away to oil companies.

Which comes shortly after news the Interior Department has barely bothered to collect royalties from oil companies, which the industry owes the government for drilling on federal property, in recent years.

If administration officials aren’t careful, the public might get the impression that they’re beholden to Big Oil. Wouldn’t that be shocking?

It’s not so much how thoroughly corrupt this administration has been in virtually all matters of public governance, it’s that they are so obvious about it. There’s not even the pretense of them governing, you know, throwing the public a bone of regulations enforced or good laws enacted. It’s the shamelessness and matter-of-factness about their criminality that bugs me the most.

  • This is the kind of thing that the D candidate for pres in 2008 needs to bring up, because any American can understand that not colecting royalties is stealing from them. Want lower taxes? Collect what’s due first.

  • My father used to be an oil & gas lawyer in New Orleans. I remember asking him back in the 1990’s what was the big issue with drilling for oil in the Gulf (why wasn’t there more of it). He said that it was harder to get, required more work and was therefore more expansive. Why the Bush administration felt the need to hide something that was fairly well known – over a decade ago, I do not know. It wasn’t like by not letting the report/information out that he was letting go of some uber-secret.

  • Which comes shortly after revelations that officials at Bush’s Interior Department tried to hide information that federal incentives for oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico isn’t cost effective, doesn’t produce a lot of oil, and is generally just a massive give-away to oil companies.

    Now just wait a right got-darn second, there CB. This is all about the common man, the angry white male, about not getting those common white people any free health care and sending all their relative off to die in Iraq for nothing. It’s about keeping out the illegal immigrants, all the ones GWB wants to nationalize. It’s not about robbing the country and giving the proceeds to big oil.

    Right?

  • The incompentent, blatently self-serving Bush administration has put our entire economy into great danger. The billions drained by Bush buddies such as Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and other robber baron affiliates have caused investors to look at our entire system with misgivings. Massive tax cuts for those who need them least has given large sectors of our population an honest sense of disenfranchisement.
    The Bush administration has managed to create divides in all areas, including class. The middle class has been losing jobs at the rate of 130K a month since 2001. The new jobs created are low level, mfg wages have dropped from an average of $20. an hour in 2001 to $12. an hour in 2006. That is a 40% wage cut in half a decade.
    That the Bushies would feed the fat cats at the expense of the populace and the environment is old news. I only hope people are sick of it enough to beat on the democrats to repeal a lot of the powers given these idiots after 911.
    At ET said so clearly, covering up old news isn’t very smart or necessary. That won’t stop these idiots from trying; they think they are smart and everyone else is stupid.

  • One crack at a time, the mountainous monopoly that is the Bush “shammed”-ministration begins to crumble

  • Considering that some six months ago, Gale Norton left her post and investigations of white collar crime take quite a while to get going. Hmmm…..

    It might explain why she fled the Dept of Interior to “spend more time with her family” as there was some speculation as to why she suddenly left.

    Unlike Jack A, there is no way Bush can duck this scandal as the top echelons of the admin (being that Bush and Cheney have all too well known ties to Big Oil.)

  • “Unlike Jack A, there is no way Bush can duck this scandal as the top echelons of the admin (being that Bush and Cheney have all too well known ties to Big Oil.)”

    What I meant to say was:

    Unlike Jack A, there is no way Bush can duck this scandal as the top echelons of the admin have all too well known ties to Big Oil.

    Damn vegetative state.

  • You liberals just don’t have the Evangelical faith in God it takes to see that what’s best for the country is to put all its money into the hands of charlatans.

  • “The Justice Department is investigating…”

    I am mystified as to why we seem to be able to depend upon the Bush Executive Branch’s Justice Department to successfully pursue such matters. Will anyone explain why this is so?

  • I am mystified as to why we seem to be able to depend upon the Bush Executive Branch’s Justice Department to successfully pursue such matters. Will anyone explain why this is so? — Bud Erland

    Not everyone trusts the Justice Dept to investigate such matters. Bush does, because he can be assured that they’ll go over the heavy ground lightly, give the matter a bit of scrubbing then will tell us there was lots of smoke but nofire at all. Let’s move on.

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